The Way Back
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: It isn't the first time she's seen his cover blend with his real life tonight, and she can't say she's complaining. [A bit of a follow-up to Here We Go.]


**Title:** _The Way Back_ (1/1)

 **Fandom:** _Blindspot,_ AU for 1x09

 **Rating:** PG-13

 **Pairing:** Jane Doe/Kurt Weller [James Harding/Gwen Harding]

 **Summary:** It isn't the first time she's seen his cover blend with his real life tonight, and she can't say she's complaining.

A little follow-up to _Here We Go._

. . .

They sit side by side on the drive back from the mountaintop, the once-empty seat between them having been repurposed as hers. As she sits there now, in the middle, she leans against him as their Bureau-issued chauffeur speeds them away from the carnage at the villa and out into the night. There will be a helicopter waiting for them in about fifteen minutes, further down the mountainside, and then a three-hour flight to follow it, and for once, Jane is happy about the length of the airborne ride. It will give her more time to stay in this moment, this life, here with Kurt.

Because she knows once they get back to the Bureau in New York, all of it will be gone: the dress, the makeup, the tux, the wedding rings. The kisses and the handholding and the soft words and the way he allows not only his eyes to linger on her longer than ever before, but his lips and his hands too. The freedom between them will disappear, it will _all_ disappear, because it's _meant_ to disappear, because this was just one mission, and now that it's completed, there's no reason to stay in it and pretend anymore.

Except she can't help it. As she rests her head against him, she reaches out an arm across his chest to hook around his far shoulder, holding him close. In response, he reaches a hand up, cupping her upper arm, and rubs his fingers against the velvet of her sleeved dress. He doesn't need to tell her that he wishes he were touching her bare skin.

"You should get some sleep," he eventually suggests, and while she nods in agreement against him, she also knows that sleep isn't an option, not for her, not now. She wants to— _needs to_ —be awake for all of what little time they have left together like this. She can't let this time with him slip through her fingers like all the rest of her life has. She won't allow it.

And, as she comes to terms with this fact, she realizes that she wants him to know it as well. She wants him to know _all_ of it. And she wants him to feel the same.

"I don't want to sleep," she tells him, lifting her head from his shoulder so that she can look him in the eye. "I don't want to miss this." Eyes falling momentarily, she adds softly, "Whatever time we have left, I want to be _here,_ and I want to be awake for it."

He's quiet for a minute, for almost longer than she can stand. And then, almost as if from a dream, a fantasy, she hears him whisper, "Me too," as he leans over to press a kiss to her hair.

She doesn't know exactly when it happened, when they stopped embodying their covers as if they were strangers and started to be nothing more than themselves with different names. Thinking back, she guesses that maybe it started sometime during that dance, the one where he refused to let any of the other party-goers cut in (just as James wouldn't have), and where he held her in his arms for nearly fifteen minutes straight, moving closer all the time.

She can still remember the way it felt when he kissed her, in the middle of one of those dances. More than the unbridled power or the supreme gentleness, both of which he exuded before when his lips met hers out on that lawn, this kiss during the dance had been different. She thinks of it now, as she thought of it then, with only one description coming to mind: _normal_.

It was normal, the way he leaned forward as he turned her on the dance floor, and bent his head only a fraction so their lips could meet. It was normal, the way she could feel him smile as he did so, as he took her lips in his. And it was normal, the way she stepped closer to him, so close that she could feel his chest against hers, and took his face in her hands, so that they were no longer dancing, but simply kissing amidst music, letting the rest of the room move around them.

She's still thinking of that dance, and that kiss, and of whether she was Jane or Gwen when it happened, when the car pulls to a stop many minutes later. They unbuckle their seatbelts, and he gets out first, turning back to offer her a hand. She takes it, rising from the car in a practiced, elegant movement that they both agreed James's Gwen would favor. A little smile plays on the edges of his lips as he watches her rise, and for moment, she can see him flash between the two men, caught between the warm affection of Kurt and the raw desire that is James's purview. It makes her stomach plunge and her heart leap.

When she stands, she laces her fingers through his, and then they turn to their drive to offer a grateful thank-you. He risked his life here as much as they did today, and they're both thankful he stayed on call to get them out when they needed it, especially when there was no one else within a hundred miles that could help if they needed an escape. Like any agent would, he brushes off their praise, citing duty and regular work ethic, but Jane can tell he's flattered nonetheless. She doubts someone as senior in the Bureau as Kurt has ever stopped to give this man his due, and she smiles to herself, because she knows Kurt knows this too, and that's why he's saying something.

As they leave their driver and duck down to head to the helicopter, Jane can't help but squeeze Kurt's hand a little tighter, her diamond rings digging into his skin. Despite everything that's happened today, all the danger they've been in, she still feels as scared climbing into the helicopter to go home as she did climbing out of that car to head up to the villa earlier in the afternoon. It's an irrational fear, she knows, and so it can't be conquered. And yet, she wishes she could find a way to reason through it, to beat it...

"Just don't think about it," Kurt advises her, all but shouting in her ear to be heard over the growing whine of the blades above their heads.

Jane would laugh, if this were a laughing matter. There's no way _not_ to think about it, she wants to say, as he helps her up into the cabin, but instead, she busies herself with strapping into the middle seat once more, tightening each buckle to utmost secureness. Perhaps knowing of her fear, the pilot takes a moment to check with them, to make sure everyone's ready before he takes off, before focusing his full attention on the flight ahead. They both nod, and Kurt slaps the man's seatback for extra assurance, hastening their departure faster than Jane would've liked.

But she hardly has moment to linger on that thought, for they're barely into the air when he turns to her, takes her face in his hands, and kisses her soundly. Caught by surprise, she gasps, but he doesn't let go, and is in fact pulling her closer, and as her mind spins, they rise into the air, but she hardly feels the change in pressure. All she can think of, all she can feel, is his mouth against hers, his hands on her cheeks, the way his body is surging to hers, as if he's trying to block out all other stimuli but what he gives her.

And he does. He succeeds.

They're fully steady in the air and heading down the mountain by the time she manages to put a hand on his chest and push him back just a fraction so she can breathe. "James," she tries to say, but he shakes his head. That isn't needed anymore. So she swallows and tries again. "Kurt—"

But she doesn't have time to say anything else, not really, because his hands are holding her face again, and his eyes are so tender as they fall from her eyes to her lips, and she doesn't mind, really, that he kisses her before she can say anything else. Because whatever she had to say, it isn't really important in light of this.

She responds to the feel of his lips against hers easily, as if they've been doing this together for years, and not mere hours. His mouth is now familiar to her, in a way she never believed would be possible. She can recognize the rows of his teeth when her tongue enters his mouth, can feel little crooked one at the bottom, and she moans softly—silently under the roar of the helicopter—as his tongue meets hers.

And, despite his earlier correction, he's more James than Kurt in the minutes that follow, as he changes the rules and ups the stakes and pulls her half into his lap on the helicopter, both of them straining against the straps to be closer to each other. It isn't the first time she's seen his cover blend with his real life tonight, and she can't say she's complaining.

James gives himself license that Kurt would never take, especially not with her, and she finds his uninhibitedness thrilling and seductive. When he's James, there's nothing there between them anymore except want. There's no history, no worry, no fear, no proper protocol to follow, just _want._ Pure, unadulterated, and always to be acted upon.

Gwen, too, does things Jane would never do. She's comfortable with her new husband, ravenous for him, and she doesn't mind showing it. She slips her hands beneath the jacket of his tux, pulling him ever closer despite their nearness, and digs her fingernails into his back. She runs her hand up one of his legs, so far that he has to snatch it away and hold it in his, growling, "Not here and not yet" against her lips.

And she can't help it, the shiver that runs through her and the spark of want flares again deep in her body, hotter than ever before, because his voice is promising things to her, even as his hands take them away—things she can both immediately imagine and things she can't even begin to believe.

 _Not here and not yet._

"Then where and when?" she hears Gwen ask, hears herself ask, parting her lips from his for just a moment, but staying close enough so that their noses bump as they suck in desperate breaths.

He stares at her, open-mouthed, shock lighting up his eyes for a moment—and then he grins, kissing her briefly, impetuously. A second later he breaks away, and sighing a moment, he admits, "I don't know, Jane. When we're home."

"Home," she echoes, thinking of it, wondering exactly where he's referring to. His apartment, where he lives with his sister and nephew? Her safe house, which is always being monitored by Bureau agents?

Taking her left hand in his, Kurt lifts it to his lips and presses a number of steadfast kisses to her knuckles. "We'll figure something out," he whispers against her rings, sensing her worry as easily as he might his own.

She closes her eyes, internalizing his reassuring voice and letting his words play over and over again inside his head. Finding peace in them, and promise, she settles against him once more, though the fire between them has been dampened for the time being.

Shifting back more fully-but not wholly-into her seat, Jane tucks her legs up beneath her on the vacant third seat and rests her head against Kurt's chest. When his arms wrap around her, holding her to him, she draws gratefully closer to him. It's easier not to worry about the flying—or about anything—when he's grounding her so firmly.

She doesn't ask what they're going to do when they make it back to the Bureau. She knows all this will all be gone the moment they touch down—even if they _do_ end up going home together—and she doesn't want to discuss the fallout prematurely. She just wants to live, here in his arms, and not think about when or for how long they'll have to part once they re-enter reality.

It would be much worse, she knows, if she didn't have his promise reverberating in her ears.

 _When we're home. We'll figure something out._

She thinks of those words, over and over again, all the way back. She thinks of them as she drifts in and out of consciousness, dozing in his arms for only brief minutes at a time before jolting violently awake whenever the chopper hits turbulence. He's there each and every time, though, always with a firm hold on her and an assurance that everything's fine.

When they get off the helicopter and step down onto the roof of the FBI building, Jane expects him to let go of her. She expects him to stop looking at her the way he has been all day; to stop acting like whatever happened between them up on that mountaintop, and in that helicopter, is going to continue to be real or have any meaning whatsoever once they walk through the elevator doors and onto the twelfth floor.

But he continues holding onto her hand, just as he has all evening, as they make their way across the roof in full view of the surveillance cameras, as they take the elevator downstairs, and he's still holding it when they walk out onto the twelfth floor, where the team is waiting for them.

She can feel them staring: Mayfair frowning, her chin rising to appraise them; Reade nervous, eyes darting between them; Zapata crossing her arms with pursed lips; and Patterson, slack-jawed after a double take, but quick to recover. And it makes Jane wonder, for the first time, if they really did end up seeing everything that had happened on that mountaintop. There hadn't been any reception up there, not of any kind—they were completely on their own—but had their car been monitored, and the tape sent along back to the Bureau? Had the helicopter they'd ridden in been bugged? Had they all seen—?

But as they draw closer, she realizes that none of them are actually looking at her or Kurt's faces; they're staring down at their hands, still entwined, still wearing rings, and she almost laughs. _This_ is their reaction to her and Kurt just holding hands?

But it's funny for only a second, because it immediately makes her realize how they would react had they seen all that happened today between her and Kurt. She glances over at him as they finally part, breaking their hands and joining the rest of the team now as individuals instead of their two-person partnership of today, and she wonders what he's thinking of. Could he get fired for what's happened between them, especially if they decide to go through with whatever plans they've made for tonight? Could she? What is she supposed to do, where is she supposed to go, once the Bureau's kicked her out into the cold?

Since it's nearly one-thirty in the morning, and since the mission proved successful, and since everyone—even those who stayed back at headquarters—are exhausted, Mayfair decides to give them a break, and schedules the debriefing for tomorrow, at ten AM. Jane can't help but breathe out an audible sigh of relief at the announcement, and Patterson throws her a quick smile, as if understanding where she's coming from. Jane wishes she could ignore the guilt that floods her at that brief moment of camaraderie; after these stolen moments with Kurt, she feels like a traitor to the team. They might suspect, they might assume, that something is going on; but those two actions are so very different from _knowing_ that she feels another pit open up in her stomach, deep and dark this time. She's never hidden anything from them before. She's never wanted to, or needed to. And she wished that now, she didn't have to.

Once Mayfair dismisses them and heads back to her office, the team breaks apart immediately, only hanging back a few moments to offer congratulations and—in Patterson's case—a hug for Jane. They all file to the elevator, and though they hold it for Jane and Kurt, he waves them off.

"Have to change," he excuses for them both, gesturing to their formalwear. Jane feels a surge of gratefulness—she was hoping for a moment alone with him, away from all the others—before they left. She wonders if he made up that excuse on the fly, or if he's been thinking about time alone for a while now, too.

"Just leave them in the costume locker; we'll send them out to get cleaned tomorrow," Patterson advises as she takes her hand off the door. "And don't forget," she adds as the elevator starts to close, "you have to leave the rings behind, too!"

Jane catches a flash of her grin, and hears Reade laugh, just before the doors draw shut.

Once they're gone, Kurt lets out a heavy sigh beside her. Without even having to look, she reaches out for his hand, and clasps it in hers.

"We'll figure something out," she reminds him.

He catches her eye, smiling a little at her use of his own words, and then they head back to the locker room together. They change in silence, neither looking at the other, each somehow feeling humbled, in this room where they prepare and later decompress from missions with their team. Even when they're alone and naked together, it remains a solemn space.

Jane looks at the lockers around her as she changes, sliding out of the skin-tight dress Kurt unzipped for her and back into her regular jeans and tank top, wondering how many more missions she'll be allowed to go on. If the trip home was any indication, whatever is happening between her and Kurt cannot be contained in one setting or one single space of time. It can't be hidden behind fake identities. It can't be turned off or ignored or set aside in favor of other commitments. It's going to bleed across all the different aspects of their lives—she can see it already—and she finds she's scared to know just how far it will go. Will this be her last week with the team, before they're discovered? Her last month?

"When Mayfair finds out, is she going to fire us?"

The words are out of Jane's mouth before she's even taken the time to think them through, but it's impossible to call them back, and neither does she want to. She waits, back to Kurt, breath held, until he answers. He doesn't pretend to not understand what she's referring to.

She listens to the sound of his footsteps grow nearer for a few seconds, closes her eyes when she feels the bench beside her creak and settle beneath his weight. She's grateful that he doesn't reach out to touch her, or kiss her again, because she wants answers now, real answers, and she knows she won't get them if they give into the desires that James and Gwen stoked in them.

"She can't fire you," he says quietly. "You don't even technically work for the FBI—the best she could do is send you away, bar your access from the building."

"That's enough."

In her periphery, Jane sees him shake his head. "She won't do it, though. Not even if she knows about…" He pauses a moment, and turns fully to face her, straddling the bench. "Jane, I don't know if you fully understand how important you are to this department. Your tattoos lead us to cases in days, hours—cases that might have otherwise taken us _years_ to unlock without the proper clues. They lead us to situations, to criminals, that we never would have even known were threats, had you not been there to point us in the right direction. You've saved hundreds of lives—millions, and maybe billions, too, if you think about the disease strains from the CDC—"

Jane shakes her head, not buying it. "That's just my body. You have the images of it; you have the tattoos; you have Patterson and her computers; you don't need _me_."

"Yes, we do," Kurt counters at once, his voice rising with conviction. "Jane, do you really think we would have been able to do even _half_ the missions we've completed since you showed up without you? And it isn't just because you speak other languages or you're a clean shot," he adds before she can argue, "It's because you have good intuition. It gets you into trouble, yes, I'll give you that, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't get anything done without it." He finds her eyes, holds them with his. "You're powerful, Jane, you are. And not just physically. You're necessary—to this world, and to this team. We need you here, with us. We need you to help us do our jobs." He smiles a little, his eyes brightening with mirth for just a moment as he adds, "And I doubt that whatever office romances you get into is going to change that."

Allowing herself a small smile of her own, Jane nods, digesting what he's saying. She works through it, looks for loopholes, looks for reasons not to believe. But as usual, Kurt tells her things straight. In the end, she only has one more question.

"Well, what about you, then? She can still fire you. _You_ actually work here."

He chuckles softly, catching her eye. "Well, lucky for me, my name happens to be tattooed in huge block letters on the back of our most important asset, and we still don't know why. I'd say that's reason enough to keep me around a little longer, if only just to find out. Plus," he adds, as if this is just a detail, "Mayfair and I have a bit of a history."

Jane laughs a little too, thinking of his speech to her—all her accomplishments he exalted—and yet he has nothing more to say about himself except that his name is on her back, and that he has clout with the assistant director of the Bureau. But she knows him well by now; she knows there are things he doesn't need to acknowledge or take credit for, and worse, things he doesn't _want_ to. At this moment, she's just grateful that she's a topic he's willing to talk about, to consider. She's grateful he's willing to let her in.

"I wouldn't go worrying too much," Kurt says, breaking into her thoughts. "We'll figure all that out when it comes time for it, and not before."

Jane nods, agreeing with this. There's no reason to fret over something that hasn't happened yet, even if it _is_ inevitable. They'll find a way to make this work; they have to. But why start worrying now?

As she feels him wrap an arm around her back in comfort and solidarity, she leans into him, thankful for his presence here, at this moment. When he pulls her into a hug, she can feel his hands, warm against her skin even through the fabric of her tank top, and for the first time, the ink on her body, beneath her clothes and beneath his hands, _does_ make her feel lucky. She wouldn't be here with him without it.

And so, even in that solemn space, it still feels right, just for a moment, for her to pull him a little closer and draw his lips to hers. The walls of the FBI hold a lot of secrets, she thinks as she holds onto him. They can manage one more.

. . .

 **Author's Note** : Reviews would be greatly appreciated! Let me know what worked and what didn't! Thanks for reading. :) Fingers crossed for tonight!


End file.
